Sand Nigger by Lawrence Joseph

Sand Nigger

In the house in Detroit

in a room of shadows

when grandma reads her Arabic newspaper

it is difficult for me to follow her

word by word from right to left

and I do not understand

why she smiles about the Jews

who won't do business in Beirut

"because the Lebanese

are more Jew than Jew,"

 or whether to believe her

that if I pray

to the holy card of Our Lady of Lebanon

I will share the miracle.

Lebanon is everywhere

in the house: in the kitchen

of steaming pots, leg of lamb

in the oven, plates of kousa,

hushwee rolled in cabbage,

dishes of olives, tomatoes, onions,

roasted chicken, and sweets;

at the card table in the sunroom

where grandpa teaches me

to wish the dice across the backgammon board

to the number I want;

Lebanon of mountains and sea,

of pine and almond trees,

of cedars in the service

of Solomon, Lebanon

of Babylonians, Phoenicians, Arabs, Turks

and Byzantines, of the one-eyed

monk, saint Maron,

in whose rite I am baptized;

Lebanon of my mother

warning my father not to let

the children hear,

of my brother who hears

and from whose silence

I know there is something

I will never know; Lebanon

of grandpa giving me my first coin

secretly, secretly

holding my face in his hands,

kissing me and promising me

the whole world.

My father's vocal chords bleed;

he shouts too much

at his brother, his partner,

in the grocery store that fails.

I hide money in my drawer, I have

the talent to make myself heard.

I am admonished to learn,

never to dirty my hands

with sawdust and meat.

At dinner, a cousin

describes his niece's head

severed with bullets, in Beirut,

in civil war. "More than

an eye for an eye," he demands,

breaks down, and cries.

My uncle tells me to recognize

my duty, to use my mind,

to bargain, to succeed.

He turns the diamond ring

on his finger, asks if

I know what asbestosis is,

"the lungs become like this,"

he says, holding up a fist;

he is proud to practice

law which "distributes

money to compensate flesh."

Outside the house my practice

is not to respond to remarks

about my nose or the color of my skin.

"Sand nigger," I'm called,

and the name fits: I am

the light-skinned nigger

with black eyes and the look

difficult to figure—a look

of indifference, a look to kill—

a Levantine nigger

in the city on the strait

between the great lakes Erie and St. Clair

which has a reputation

for violence, an enthusiastically

bad-tempered sand nigger

who waves his hands, nice enough

to pass, Lebanese enough

to be against his brother,

with his brother against his cousin,

with cousin and brother

against the stranger.